Social Media Debate: Content Trumps Everything

When I first started managing conferences, I quickly discovered that topics (content) drove attendance. In survey after survey, participants told us they made a decision to attend based on the ontent (topics), not speakers and not location.

Commentaries and presentations about whether or not social media will transform associations fill the "air" at conferences, in blogs and on social media sites themselves.

Focusing solely on social media is like trying to decide whether to hold a conference in April or May when the real issue is who is the audience and what topics are important to them.

I was reminded of this the other day when a meetings magazine reporter was interviewing Miriam Yanders (our meeting planner) and I about "challenges to drive attendance to annual conventions."

Miriam and I shared our findings from back in 1993 and 1994 ... content (topics) trumps everything. If you deliver content relevant to the target audiences, they will come.

Get the content right and your association's members will flock to you.

Once you have the content right, you can determine how to deliver that content in a way that boosts your oganization and benefits your audiences (members, potential members, etc.). And what is really exciting today is that we have a whole host of delivery vehicles:

• A traditional conference
• A Webinar
• A blog
• Facebook Fan Page
• LinkedIn Group Discussion/News
• Tweets with links to blogs
• Web site
• Videos (via YouTube)
• Audio (via Podcasts)

Focus first on content. Then on the delivery vehicles. And, determine which of those vehicles is the best tool to reach most of your audience to deliver the content important to them.

A couple of thoughtful blogs help give more detail on content marketing and what it means to your organization:

Five Reasons why Content Strategy comes before Social Media:
http://bit.ly/1a89Vw

How to Attract and Retain Customers with Content:
http://bit.ly/ezFYs

Your thoughts?

Steve